What decides right and wrong in foreign policy?

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I think we are relatively close together in our views. I certainly agree that policies can be judged, and particularly so with the benefit of hindsight. But where the judgement is always going to be skewed by the subjective morality of the observer, I am still left to wonder, "Why bother?"

Let's consider a question of policy that is as close to universally reviled as any: Apartheid. This was bad policy not just viewed through my moral lens, but it was bad policy economically. It served to isolate South Africa from its neighbors and its trading partners, and impeded South African prosperity. Even without the benefit of hindsight, we don't have to rely on morality to judge Apartheid. We don't have to condemn North Koreas treatment of its citizens on moral grounds: the evidence of brutality and starvation creates a compelling case to condemn them on ethical and practical grounds.

But those are the easy ones. What about the biggest flashpoint in foreign policy today: Israel-Palestine? When we start assessing Israeli and Palestinian actions on moral grounds, we get lost in a hopeless exercise of competing outrage. Neither side is free from blame; both have committed acts that can be judged as immoral. So how do we come to a conclusion about right and wrong?

I my view, we don't. We eschew morality. Rather than take up positions, we look to interests. How are the maximum number of interests best served? That's not a moral decision, that's a practical one. Realpolitik isn't pretty. But it puts food on the tables of your citizens.

I disagree. The calculation seems to be "What gets me.....

votes
avoids upsetting the media
donations
appeals to (insert gender preference)
Looks good in history books (usually prior to retirement or health issues)
the approval of my religious leaders
money
power
fame
etc/etc....

I'd say the interests of citizens seem pretty down the list.

Reread your list. What's the first item on it?

People vote according to their interests. When government enunciates a foreign policy that runs contrary to their interests, then governments are going to pay the price for those decisions.

I would perhaps alter that to perceived interest. Citizens, whether for ignorance or shortsightedness, often vote against their own interests. I am somewhat elitist in this view, but the idea holds currency at one point or another in the history of every democracy.

I a Democracy the corrupt govern the blind and the blind vote for the Corrupt.

ruveyn

How is a perceived interest not an interest?

Just because I am stupid, misguided or ignorant does not mean that my vote does not count. And government must, on some level, be responsive not only to what it believes that I need, but also what I state that I want.

If government could simply do what is best, then technocracy would be the ideal form of government (and those of us who toil in the public sector sometimes idly wish that this were so). But we have made a deliberate choice in our countries to ensure that the body politic is as broadly representative of the population as we can reasonably make it. And that decision admits the stupid, the misguided and the ignorant.

In this sense I mean that voters will often vote for policy slates that, given careful examination, actually work against the voter's aims. Voters may know what they want, but they often choose bad methods of getting what they want.

The "arguably" undermines the degree to which we could consider this "moral reasons". I don't think the Civil War was a matter of morality, and I think that the moral aspects of the North are really just played up by history being written by victors. The goal of the war was restoring the union. The separation was due to ongoing political conflicts about slavery, but not a love of slaves on the part of the North. The Emancipation Proclamation was clear propaganda, and was really just binding to Southern states, the ones currently in rebellion and not under Lincoln's control.